


Thoughts on the Fujocourse

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [12]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:03:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: Fujoshi discourse posts from tumblr
Series: March Meta Matters [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Kudos: 5
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. Not Like The Other Fujoshi!

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, the fujocourse! The wank topics of "Why slash?", "How dare ladies like things?", and "But you're not real gay men!" remain evergreen. Whether the 70s or the 2020s, people just will not shut the fuck up about this, and I have waded into the fight many times.
> 
> If you're not familiar with the term 'fujoshi', it's a Japanese term that means any woman-identified person who likes m/m. ('Fudanshi' is for men who like m/m content. 'Fujin' is a gender-neutral back-formation coined by English speakers.)
> 
> Morons on Tumblr try to redefine it. They are wrong and should stop being racist as fuck to Japanese fans.
> 
> Uploaded for day 12 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: June 6, 2018.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/174652765994/doctorsnark-fiction-is-not-reality
> 
> kawaii-hot-pocket left a comment for someone else saying: "Bro, you're making it sound like shipping anything gay means you're a fujoshi. Fujoshi take that to the extremes." That was _after_ they'd had the word explained to them multiple times.
> 
> Doctor snark commented: "I’m honestly so curious where these people got this new definition of fujoshi from. 10 years ago we knew what it was-girls that ship slash pairings and usually read BL. Where the hell did this fujoshi=homophobe even come from?"
> 
> This was my response.

It’s actually two old wanks dressed up in new clothes. Tell me these don’t sound familiar from past eras of fandom!

**1\. HDU get girl cooties on my hobby?**

  * Someone did a paper/study/survey/headcount at a con, and they say fanfic writers are mostly women. Injustice! Think of the men!
  * Ranma ½ BNFs were mostly dudes, and there are more men on FFN (”more” compared to _what_, I shan’t specify), so your evil, biased survey of evil is WRONGITY WRONG WRONG.
  * What do you mean that FFN survey still shows 70% women, and all the surveys that are inclusive to agender/nb/etc. people are around the same??? “Majority” totally means 99%, right? Right?

**2\. I like slash a special way. I am Not Like the Other Girls!**

  * I’m bi, so I have a claim to slash that straight girls don’t.
  * In my fantasy life, I picture myself as male, which is totally unusual and has never ever happened to any other cis woman ever.
  * When I have sexual fantasies, they’re about other people, not me, which is totally not a SUPER COMMON thing in fandom at all. Ergo, “slasher” is my sexual orientation. And my gender. And my political party.
  * I have a gay best friend, and he said…
  * I only ship pairings who have a Profound Connection in canon. You people will ship any two characters just because they’re hot.
  * Sure, I like this stuff, but I’m not a squeeing, glomping _teenager_.

Now we have the unholy offspring of misogynist dude wank and self-hating chick wank from the 90s. By their powers combined they are Captain Fujocourse, here to take historicity… err… pollution down to zero.

Instead of defending the right of _whomever_ to ship _whatever_, we do our best to offer a better whipping boy.

**It’s about defining a narrower and narrower band of acceptable targets.**

Instead of dealing with misogyny, we try to personally opt out, leaving the rest of the system in place. A man leads with that. Anyone who’s not a woman leads with that. Queer girls say we’re just writing queer stuff, so back off.

(Yes, I dimly remember holding some dumb views like this back in the early LJ days–meaning ~15 years ago for you tumblr young’ns. I’m sure there are some doozies lurking in my journal should I care to read back that far.)

Young, impressionable girls are the problem. Old ladies who shouldn’t have a sexuality anymore are the problem. Slashers who write male characters as too emotional, frail, or GIRLY are the problem. Yadda yadda. Whether the target is a woman or not, it all boils down to femaleness and/or femininity being bad.

This delusion about the word ‘fujoshi’ extends to ‘slash’ and ‘slasher’. I’ve seen plenty of young people on tumblr saying that merely using those terms shows that someone is an Old who is probably homophobic IRL while shipping pretty boys on the internet. It’s “mlm” or nothing. (Personally, as a bi woman who has been out since 1995, I think ‘mlm’ and ‘wlw’ sound like they belong in a journal article on straight-identified people having gay sex, but whatever.)

It boils down to feeling like BL/slash/whatever is shameful, too much enthusiasm is shameful, too much girl-associated stuff is shameful. You can like it, but it should be a dirty secret. Or you can like it, but not too much.

**Women being happy are shameful!**

It has nothing to do with the word ‘fujoshi’ specifically and everything to do with a bunch of fujoshi openly using that term and not apologizing for their taste.

Fujocourse gets a little extra boost because queerness has diversified and fandom has grown massively: Regardless of percentages, in 2018, we have way more _individual_ fans who love m/m and who are not women than we did in 1998. (And I imagine plenty of them feel outnumbered by women. That’s a realistic assessment of fanfic fandom in general and of slash fandom/BL fandom in particular.) But the basic impulse to opt out of misogyny and throw others under the bus is the same as it always was.

Won’t somebody filk Britney Spears? (”Fetishizer, fetishizer…”♪♫)


	2. Damn right, I object.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: July 30, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/186670082154/the-term-fujoshi-really-only-caught-on-in
> 
> The conversation started with a pro-shipper posting a screencap of an anti comment to laugh at it. The comment was: "that being said fujoshis get killed on sight if they touch Given". Given is a BL anime based on a BL manga made by and for fujoshi.
> 
> Various pro-ship types weighed in shaking their heads. Eventually, someone showed up to tell us all that this joking death threat was obviously only referring to fetishizers, so stop being mad, you guys!
> 
> I'll say again: the meaning has _not_ changed, and anyone who insists it has is a racist little pustule, particularly on Tumblr a year ago when there were gay Japanese men weighing in to be like "Uh, can you not?" and to give the real definition. These posts were widely circulated. People making these arguments _did_ see them; they just didn't care.

> Y’all have to understand that language is not stagnant, and a word being adopted and changed over time is not necessarily a bastardization that needs to be fought against.
> 
> To the large majority of western people, fujoshis means women fetishizing mlm. When people say negative things about fujoshis, that’s the definition they’re using. If you aren’t into mlm as a fetish, then to them you’re not a fujoshi, they’re not talking about you
> 
> You’re getting upset at posts not even meant to be directed towards you. It’s not their fault you decided to call yourself a fujoshi even though by the majority’s definition you aren’t one.
> 
> Stop getting upset because you changed a posts intent by using your own separate definition of a word

The term ‘fujoshi’ really only caught on in English recently, and a lot of us still refer back to what it actually means in Japanese.

Look at urban dictionary, for example: There are a couple of definitions from 2005 and 2009, and then a whole bunch from the last 3-5 years. The incidence of ‘fujoshi’ on tumblr and reddit and many other sites shows a massive upswing in that same period. This is _not_ a long-established loan word. It’s a Japanese word we’re still in the process of borrowing.

I see no evidence that it means “fetishizer” to a majority of Western fans, only to a majority of self-identified antis on tumblr/twitter. We’re also talking about a Japanese-language canon here, made by self-identified fujoshi. Their definition of the term is more relevant.

This is like when people try to re-define ‘bisexual’ to mean people who only believe in two genders and who are transphobic. Yeah, language changes, but when someone is trying to force a creepy, bigoted change with a creepy, bigoted agenda, I’m going to voice my irritation.

Beyond that, the term “fetishizing” is used on tumblr in ways that are both meaninglessly broad and deeply disingenuous. I’m not fond of creepy straight women bachelorette parties at gay bars either. But there’s a big gap between that and shipping something–even shipping something purely because it’s hot and you want to masturbate to explicit fan art of it.

A huge part of anti-fujoshi discourse is horror at the idea that women might masturbate to something we find hot.

Another huge part is horror that depictions of men aren’t the exclusive province of men and that depictions of men loving or having sex with men aren’t the exclusive province of cis gay men.

If the fujocourse were _actually_ about fetishizing gay men–i.e. treating actual gay men poorly in real life–there would be much more focus on in-person interactions, much more evidence of people actually using dumb “sin babies” terminology outside of strawman anecdotes, and more focus on helping queer art by queer men be found more easily by the audience that is looking for that. I _do_ think there are issues with, for example, how “m/m romance” as a commercial genre and queer lit as a commercial genre are interacting lately. I think there is a huge issue with how the m/m romance market craves faux-authenticity, leading some authors to lie about their identities. Yet this same market does not actually like the dominant erotica, romance, and literary styles popular in gay male communities. Cis gay men are often less successful in that market than AFAB authors, and while I don’t think this is necessarily problematic, it’s an interesting topic to discuss. Trans men are much more visible now but still feel marginalized in many queer spaces and fandom spaces. That’s also something interesting to discuss.

That kind of thoughtful discussion of queer media culture is not what is going on here. “Women, please stop watching bait-y media intended for you! Having sexual feelings is inherently reprehensible!” _is_ what is going on here.

When people on tumblr or twitter say “fujoshi, stop fetishizing ___”, they’re usually telling a bunch of female fans to stop liking that media in the way the media was intended to be liked. It’s a combo of being offended that lots of women share their hobbies and being offended that anyone likes gay ships.

Yes, anti-fujoshi discourse is TERF rhetoric and sexism and homophobia dressed up as faux-social justice. This is not a positive thing for fandom.

–

This same kind of rhetoric has been common for far longer than I’ve been in fandom. It’s been common longer than either of us has been alive.

If you really are 16, you’ve only had time to see the fujocourse come around a couple of times. I’ve seen it recur, annually, since the 90s. It didn’t use the term ‘fujoshi’ then, but it was the same toxic cesspit of transphobic, misogynist, homophobic moral panic.

“We didn’t mean you!” is not an excuse. I _know_ you didn’t mean me. That’s not why I’m objecting.

I’m objecting because _the very act_ of redefining the word ‘fujoshi’ is a hostile attack on women’s right to a fantasy life.

It also goes hand-in-hand with denying the queerness of many BL fans and with misgendering a whole swath of fandom. It conflates fantasy and fiction with real life behavior and treats sexual feelings as inherently shameful and fetishizing. That isn’t what _you_ are setting out to do, but those are the people whose hands you are playing into.

Damn right, I object.


	3. Anti-Fujoshi = Anti-m/m content

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: November 21, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189216098564/anti-fujoshi-anti-mm-content
> 
> This was me spotting tag commentary and objecting

> thezedmynameismichealwithab reblogged your post “A New History of Fandom Purges”#dont agree with the anti fujoshi stuff leading into anti mlm stuff (a lot of anti fujoshis are mlm themselves) but everything else yeah

What I actually said was: “This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-**m/m** policies.”

I wasn’t using “men who love men”. I rarely use that term unless I’m directly quoting because it sounds like a creepy medical study, and it’s beloved by TERFs who hate on the term ‘queer’ because it’s too inclusive. If I mean “gay and bi men”, I’ll just say that. Normally, I say “queer men”.

(And don’t start on that “Q slur” shit with me. That’s a TERF thing.)

What I actually mentioned was “m slash m”–i.e. content that has a pairing of two dudes.

There are several issues with Tumblr’s anti-fujoshi crusade:

1\. There is no functional difference between the people complaining and the people being targeted. All of the people involved tend to be fans of the type of m/m content that is primarily aimed at women.

2\. Hating on “women” who like BL, slash fanfic, and other m/m content inevitably means forcing closeted trans men to come out before they’re ready. That’s shitty even aside from the usual level of heinous misogyny in anti-fujoshi rhetoric.

3\. MISOGYNY. Woooowwww is tumblr misogynist. “Fetishizing” in tumblr land appears to mean any time any woman has a sexual thought. Anti fujoshi posts boil down to “I don’t want icky girls getting hot and bothered over the same things I do.” No, it’s _not_ about squealing teenagers being unpleasant to gay men or to actors they find hot in person. I’ve seen that behavior, and it’s gross, but it’s standard moron teenager behavior and isn’t any more or less common just because someone likes BL. Men are ten thousand times worse at celebrities they like and at random f/f couples in bars, but somehow it is women who are the scary ones? Okay, sure.

4\. Cis gay male culture hates all of us or ignores all of us or at least fails to cater to any of us. The queer men on tumblr who are pissed about “fujoshi” aren’t any happier consuming m/m content aimed at a cis gay male audience than the rest of us are.

There are other spaces with gay media by gay men for gay men. Tumblr, in general, dislikes this media and prefers to hang out in female-centric spaces, complaining that there are too many women.

What it boils down to is that the type of m/m content that Tumblr likes is _primarily_ made by and for women.

  * M/M fanfic would not exist without this female community.
  * AO3 would not exist without this community.
  * “M/M romance” as a genre in English would not exist without this community.
  * BL manga would not exist without this community.
  * Yuri on Ice and its ilk would not exist without this community.

That does **_not_** mean that you have to be a woman to like any of this stuff. It just means that your community would not exist without “fujoshi”, so hating on them is stupid and counterproductive.

Trying to “cleanse” a space of “fujoshi” would inevitably lead to there being less m/m content. That is often the secret objective of anti-fujoshi rhetoric. Well-meaning idiots join in, thinking they’re protecting queer men, but that’s not how it plays out in practice.


	4. Nonnie, don’t make it look like I’m sending asks to myself!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 7, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189528439114/the-idea-that-fans-by-nature-of-existing-and
> 
> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189549388219/this-isnt-to-diminish-the-discussion-and-meta-of  

> 
> No, for real, people. Don't send me asks that look like I'm patting myself on the back! I like to respond to my asks publicly, but this shit just looks embarrassing!

> Anonymous asked: The idea that fans, by nature of existing and making whatever content they want are "pushing [x] people out of [y] spaces" is a dumb argument. All anyone has to do to be involved is to make and engage with the content? It's a free for all. There are no limited number of seats to push anyone out of. Plus this would imply that fandom spaces where for a particular type of people from the get go and then they got "pushed out". But then again that wouldn't make sense cause it was women then anyway.

Nonnie, don’t make it look like I’m sending asks to myself! ;)

But yes. This is exactly my take on it. We did once have massive gatekeeping simply by the nature of the technologies fandom was using–i.e. offset printing. But the zine days and even the heavily moderated Livejournal com days are long behind us. Anyone who shows up can have an AO3 account. Or a FFN account. Or a Tumblr account.

> Anonymous asked: This isn't to diminish the discussion and meta of the posts you reblogged before, but the whole "why do women like m/m so much?" is incredibly frustrating for me to read because never, not once, have I seen people ask "why do men like lesbian porn so much?" And there is no need to ask that question, either, because the answer is pretty self-evident. And yet there's all this theorizing and speculation over why women like man-on-man action, like we can't just be horny in an uncomplicated manner.

Silly nonnie, women aren’t _horny!_

We are ~delicate flowers~ unsullied by such masculine depravity!


	5. Is “I don’t want to” or “I can’t” not reason enough?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189548793099/moon6shadow-bookmark-fandom-olderthannetfic
> 
> This grew out of conversations on three-rings' popular post that starts with: "There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?"
> 
> All of the standard points we've been rehashing since I got into fandom came up. Though, in fairness, half the comments were like "I never thought about it this way before! I feel so much less alone!!!" So I guess it's worth re-discussing publicly.
> 
> As always happens during "Why slash?", the topic eventually turned to "But female characters!" Someone weighed in with: "We can’t even write fantasies for ourselves where woman are treated with respect and get to have tons of orgasms and it really bugs me"
> 
> Their post was overall thoughtful and interesting, but I was a bit irritated to see this kind of response right after a bunch of women commenting that though they're attracted to women, they have issues with their own bodies or they're asexual and sex repulsed or whatever, so reading smut about female characters doesn't work for them. They had _just explained_ why, and it was a reason that deserved empathy.

Women deserve a lot of things, but you’re assuming that everyone is part of their own sexual fantasies or that this is the healthy and desirable way to be.

For many people, that simply isn’t how we fantasize.

We get hot for voyeuristic fantasies where we’re an outsider looking at two hot people and/or we have a kind of diffuse identification with a whole situation and dynamic but don’t really self-insert to any meaningful degree.

This is something that comes up again and again in sexuality research yet is constantly ignored, including by the crappier researchers. One can certainly still fantasize about women without it being a self-insert thing, but sometimes it’s harder for people.

For me personally, writing about vaginas having a good time will always be far more difficult than writing about dicks doing the same. That’s because a lack of realism doesn’t bother me when it’s anatomy I don’t have. If I write about what women like in bed, I come up against a number of problems:

  * Sex with other people has often been failtastic for me, but I don’t actually know what would make it better, so I don’t have an idealized version to fantasize about
  * I dislike cunnilingus, but not because of body shame or anything like that
  * I dislike lots of other sex things that “normal” people like and that would logically go in a sexy story about women
  * Writing about vaginas feels more like I’m revealing things about myself even if my character is completely different from me

Yeah, yeah, tmi, it’s a me problem, blah blah blah. But I’m not alone in this. A common complaint is: “I can’t relate to women having lots of orgasms, but I don’t want to read about people having my own difficulty having an orgasm.” That’s not my personal issue, but it’s hideously common.

As for the idea that we write about men who do nothing in canon… I know it’s popular to rag on Clint/Coulson and Kylux. They are outliers. Most of the big ships are more like Stucky where canon is aaaaaall over their epic bond or rivalry or history together. Canons that are all about the epic bond between a man and a woman produce fandoms that are all that ship. They’re not always on AO3 though.

Canons that are all about the epic bond between two women are Xena and… uh… Xena. Technically, there actually were some Joxer/Ares shippers back in the day, and there were definitely het shippers early on, but most of what people actually care about for that fandom is Xena or Gabrielle or Xena/Gabrielle because that’s what canon cared about.

You are severely overestimating how creative fandom is in adapting material. We build on common templates, and our culture has lots of them for men and for het relationships but few of them for women without a man around. What Can A Heroine Do? and all that.

Russ’ argument is that we must build new myths. I think that’s a fine idea for original writing, and, in fact, lots of people who write m/m in fandom do write female-centric original stories. But that’s not what they’re drawn to in terms of fic.

As for writing men as “the girl” instead of writing women, do you seriously not see why someone who likes icky gender roles for kink reasons might be happier with a/b/o than with similar tropes using real world genders/sexes? This seems like a no-brainer to me.

“We” are kind of shitty about OFCs. I definitely agree there. The “we” that post a lot of meta about m/m are usually not fond of canon guy/OFC or canon het or readerfic. Maybe we shouldn’t be such jerks about it…

But to suggest that it’s not popular _in general_ is silly. FFN is overrun with canon(ish) het. Wattpad is wall-to-wall readerfic. Both have lots of original characters. The people who _do_ like female characters are off happily writing them and commenting on each other’s fic and ignoring the people who navel gaze about m/m and rend their garments over not liking female characters enough.

These arguments make it sound like no one likes female characters because they’re _pre-selected_ to be a category of people who are mostly consuming m/m. We’re the minority in culture in general. We’re the minority on many fannish sites other than AO3. We just get yelled at a lot, and it makes us defend ourselves in tediously repetitive ways. But _of course_ we sound similar to each other: we’re a specific taste group that was already singled out to be similar. The many, many people who feel differently aren’t participating in these conversations.

I think it’s _fine_ for the conversation to stop at “I’m too damaged by culture to enjoy art about women”. It’s _sad_, but what are we going to say to that person? That she has to get 20 years of therapy before she’s allowed to read fiction? Rewire her brain before she’s allowed to masturbate to a sex scene? No thanks!

Why can’t we remove men from the equation entirely? For the same list of reasons everyone always gives in all posts on this topic, which you’ve already read. Is “I don’t want to” or “I can’t” not reason enough?


	6. Water is Wet; I post wanky meta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189548793099/moon6shadow-bookmark-fandom-olderthannetfic
> 
> Someone mentioned the previous chapter's post. Their reblog started with:
> 
> "‘They’re not always on AO3 though.’
> 
> I think you’ve posted about this elsewhere but for those who haven’t seen it, friendly reminder places like AO3 is likely so m/m dominated because that part of fandom essentually got burned and driven out of other places like FanFiction.Net." [plus a longer comment about FFN history]

“I think you’ve posted about this elsewhere“

Hahahahahaha.

My tumblr does have a few posts on this, and the Pacific Ocean also has a little bit of water in it.

My usual arguments basically boil down to two principles:

  1. Homophobic societies (like ours) view queer material as inherently more sexual, explicit, and nsfw than straight material, so any “no porn” type rule will always disproportionately hit the queer stuff. Even if site mods make a good faith effort to not do that, it will still happen.
  2. You only need a label for the majority thing if you’re focusing on the minority one. FFN doesn’t mark ship type. Some archives mark slash and/or femslash but not het. AO3 marks het, so you can filter het out.

Even aside from all of the specific historical reasons, these basic structural differences will cause FFN and AO3 to have different content and audiences.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189549196559/veneto147-lucastapastatheshamanramen
> 
> The usual enraging argument cropped up on the same post from the last two chapters.

Poster 1:

> And it’s fine to enjoy m/m romance, but there is a God awful trend of cis het women pushing queer men out of these fandom spaces and that is not remotely okay.

Poster 2:

> That is my main gripe with this, because lgbt men frequently get shafted to the sidelines of fandom spaces. For me, It sometimes feels like we aren’t allowed to have autonomy over our own stories

I can understand feeling that way, but to me, BL and its ilk aren’t obviously gay or bi men’s stories any more than a drag queen’s work is women’s stories.

What would autonomy over your own stories look like? For queer men to be the main writers of m/m fanfic?


	8. THE TERFS HAVE WON!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 10, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189598584659/greeviangirl-blue-mystique-threerings
> 
> And then we get the reblog these debates always get.
> 
> This type of person feeling guilty and alienated is the _inevitable_ outcome of the fujocourse. If _you_ have ever done the "But think of the gay men!" thing, including "But we shouldn't write our fanfic guys too girly" and "Why isn't your m/m fic more realistic?"...
> 
> _This is what you have done._

> I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Being nonbinary, bisexual, and AFAB, I have a lot of guilt and worry about enjoying MLM romance and sex in media because of fujoshi culture and other fetishization.

**THE TERFS HAVE WON!**

No, but seriously, dude, “fujoshi culture” and “fetishization” mean exactly nothing in the way that you are using them. A fujoshi is any _woman-identified person who likes m/m_. ANY!

You are a fujin since you’re nonbinary. A guy who likes m/m is a fudanshi. They’re very, very general terms and contain zero assessment of whether the woman/nb person/man in question is also an asshat to actual queer men.

“Fetishization” in tumblr terms basically means “got horny”. Getting horny for fiction with romance and sex in it is normal. That’s a big part of why that fiction exists in the first place.

“A girl had pants feelings” is a capital crime on tumblr… because tumblr is MISOGYNIST AS FUCK.

All this “boo hoo, fujoshi” is largely a covert TERF plot to call nonbinary people like you and trans men “women” and to shit on any women (and “women”) who dare to have fantasies outside of their extremely narrow approved range.

Do not enable the TERFs by feeling guilty.

Slash fanfic was _never_ “men’s space” in any meaningful sense. Nether were m/m romance novels or BL or danmei. Male audiences of all of those are growing, but they’re still the minority, usually by a lot. You have not invaded anything.

Meanwhile, outside of tumblr, queer space and queer media are dominated by cis gay guys over every single other type of queer person. Whether it’s a thoughtful piece of literary fiction or a mainstream film or a porno, they are the ones who get all the content and take over every space. Tumblr needs to stop with this Think of the Men shit. Cis gay men are doing fine, relatively speaking.

Yes, trans queer men and nb people are trying to carve out a space for themselves that has never really existed before, and that’s wonderful. No one should be doing that at the expense of women.

That is what the fujocourse wants from you. Say no.


	9. That's not what I said, but fair point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189549885944/fiction-is-not-reality2-will-put-the-rest-of
> 
> Elsewhere, an anonymous person sent FINR a message. They mentioned me by name, and you know that means I am contractually obligated to weigh in!
> 
> No, but in all seriousness, their point was a pertinent one to the last few chapters.

Their post is long, but it reads in part:

> Yes, it’s not any single individual’s responsibility to fix, but it’s shitty to have someone act like your tiny community isn’t even worth a mention, especially when their community is so much bigger and more active. Like olderthanfic going ‘oh, the REAL female character fans are off happily writing and commenting on each other’s fics’ is so hurtful and dismissive–no, we AREN’T. I’m being hounded by antis left and right for shipping women the Wrong Way, and it feels like the m/m community treats enjoying m/m content like some kind of unifying sisterhood, so I feel doubly excluded. Men and het shippers hate me because I don’t like writing about male characters, so I’m a man hater. Women hate me because I don’t like writing about male characters so I’m anti-woman since CLEARLY all women like m/m. Antis hate me because I like and write abuse/age gap/incest/kink stuff.

Yeah, this is a fair point.

(Though the quote from me is referring to comments about m/m shippers hating on OFCs and canon het. This is a pretty confusing decontextualization.)

It is true that f/f is in a uniquely shitty position in fandom. It’s not true that female characters are unpopular.

Your fic sounds awesome, nonnie, and I’m sorry I’m not in your fandoms. Antis are a plague, and imposing even worse purity standards on f/f is one of their lows.


	10. This is why

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 12, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189632429539/yoifanficonfessions-raiseafuckingglass

> Why can’t bi people just enjoy m/m romance because we like representation? Why do people have to assume it’s a sexual thing? Why does this have to include ‘power imbalances’ or ‘harassment’? Why can’t it just be a romance when there are plenty of stories without problematic stuff? I like m/m and f/f. That’s all.

This comes up because so many bi women, myself included, consume tons of m/m but _very little_ f/f. 

It took me a long time to understand that a huge part of the reason–for me–is that I like ambiguous, complicated identities, both bi characters sorting that out and characters messing around with gender or having other complicated identities. M/M-for-women inherently has more of this even when the author is writing them as Kinsey 6s. A lot of f/f is positioned as “lesbian” (e.g. how people talk about f/f romance novels).

When I find f/f that resembles the m/m I consume, I like it, but that’s relatively uncommon, and not just because there is less f/f.


	11. No, no woman could know what that's like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 12, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189632580284/hem1ock-threerings-threerings-theres
> 
> Somebody complained about being unable to find content he could relate to and feeling fetishized. He ended with:
> 
> "people saying stuff like “when its two men it’s just a light romance meant to be fun and sexy and not represent the real world” is exactly why mlm are fetishized. that IS the real world for us. we can’t just ignore it and you shouldn’t either."

Forgive me. I’m giggling a little.

Being a woman and existing in the world means being hyper aware of being an object at all times. No woman is unaware of the kind of thing you’re describing. And yes, it’s exhausting. The _reason_ women like m/m is because it’s one of the few times we can _stop_ thinking about this.

It’s similar to why gay male culture developed drag and adopts various famous women as avatars. It’s about stepping outside of your regular identity for five minutes to say something you can express better as allegory. Everyone deserves a break.

“Fetishization” a la tumblr basically means “A girl masturbated to this once, so now it’s tainted”. It means next to nothing. “I like it because it makes me horny” is a fine reason to like something and is the reason behind most stuff for gay dudes.

The real issue here is that you’re not finding content you relate to.

What kind of stuff are you looking for? Most queer media is by and for cis gay men, frankly. They dominate offline queer spaces, drowning out the voices of the bi women who are everywhere in fandom. Is it that this type of content is too cis? To gay instead of bi? Too gender normative?

I don’t read a lot of trans romance, but there’s starting to be more of it in the m/m romance world. Maybe something there would appeal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're guessing I never heard back, you'd be right. My offer stands: if some queer dude wants help finding queer dude stuff he relates to better, I will do my best. I'm not super well read, but I've certainly read more cis gay male literature/adventure novels/mystery novels and more commercial "m/m romance" than most of tumblr.


	12. No, I will not think of the men--except in the sexy way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 27, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189907980194/maraudorable-threerings-theres-always-a
> 
> Another similar response to the same post.
> 
> Why is it that everybody thinks that "Wait, but have you thought about _the men_???" is a revolutionary take?

> Look, I didn’t want to say anything at first, but I just can’t. What you’re describing as “a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world” IS the real world for actual mlm. Not a fantasy. If a certain het romance trope is problematic enough to provoke such a negative reaction from you, it’s only logical the mlm version of the trope is problematic enough to cause the same type of reaction from mlm. It’s not removing the burden of sexism, it’s just placing it on other people.

Well, _of course_ it would feel that way to men.

**So what?**

When a person relaxes with their flavor of beach read, that moment is about them and only them. Other people’s needs don’t apply right then. They’re not placing a burden on someone else, just temporarily setting their own down.

If men find the majority of fanfic gross or alienating, that’s fine. It just means there’s a need for guys to make their own spaces–a vetted collection on AO3, a solid recs account on Pinboard, etc.

By and large, the straight, cis men _do_ make other fanfic spaces for themselves. The cis gay men are off building their own gay culture elsewhere and making media for themselves. When we have this “Think of the men” conversation in fandom, what we’re really talking about is the subset of trans men who 1. grew up in fandom and 2. are now upset about having a chick hobby and not being the primary target audience of other people’s free, amateur hobbyist material.

I feel for these dudes, and there does seem to be a call, broadly, for more spaces and media by and for trans men. I’m seeing it start a little bit in the m/m romance world as well. But trying to take back the knitting circle or the quilting bee or the fanfic space For Great Justice is male entitlement, and being trans does not make it somehow less so.

When looking at mainstream Hollywood, yes, absolutely, we should criticize the perpetuation of stereotypes. This is because Hollywood has a massive reach, and each piece of media is the product of thousands of creatives. Someone’s very personal fanfic read by 10 people or indie romance novel read by a few thousand is simply not on the same playing field.


	13. Asexual women and m/m

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 29, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189948972244/reading-about-why-lesbians-or-bisexual-women-read
> 
> And finally, a less irritating response to that post. Except for the use of 'mlm'. That term can die in a fire.

> Anonymous asked: Reading about why lesbians or bisexual women read mlm slash is really interesting but I still don’t understand why I as an aromantic asexual woman read mlm slash. I don’t want to have the fantasy relationship in the fluff fics nor I want the sex, I don’t even have the necessary parts! But some part of me finds these fics and the characters and how they’re manipulated fascinating. Especially the character study fics! I don’t know just wanted to add this, thanks for everything have a good day ☺️

Well… Society does place a very high value on romantic partnerships above all and sex as an ultimate sign of connection and intimacy. That makes it a good shorthand in fiction. 

What a lot of people most want is fic about some epic best friend relationship–possibly with h/c smarm. Sometimes, adding sex can make this relationship seem more intense in a story, but it’s not necessarily a fantasy of romance exactly as much as a fantasy of _connection_. (Granted, there are people who don’t seek _any_ profound human connection, but I assume plenty of asexual aromantic people do like the idea of strong personal relationships, just a different sort.)

Or maybe, like a lot of people, you find it interesting to read about people nothing like you because it’s something new and different. There’s probably not one clear-cut answer.


End file.
